


When There's Nothing Left to Burn

by strix_alba



Category: Nimona (Webcomic)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Families of Choice, Gen, M/M, Politics, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-01 17:21:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2781473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strix_alba/pseuds/strix_alba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sir Blackheart could really use some down time to process recent events, but the kingdom (and a few people in particular) have other plans for him. Plan A involves adoring fans and discounts at the open-air market. Plan B involves hospital visits to make sure he won't need another metal arm. Plan C includes a mysterious treatise tacked onto the Institution doors, and posters with his name on them appearing across the city.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [azurish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/azurish/gifts).



> Dear azurish,  
> Your letter was a delight to write for. As you can see, I kind of got carried away by one of your prompts. I hope that you enjoy your first Yuletide! :)
> 
> Thank you to [saltrose-and-honeybee](http://saltrose-and-honeybee.tumblr.com) for helping me brainstorm and for letting me throw ideas at you for feedback. Thank you to [radio_silent](http://no-literally.tumblr.com) for the detailed betaing and encouragement while I panicked at her. This story would be poorer without you.
> 
> Content warning: there's a brief reference to eye gore in one chapter, but I did not dwell in loving detail on anyone's injuries.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ballister is injured and confused.

Ballister Blackheart has run out of eggs.

He scouts around the refrigerator — in between soda cans and soggy egg casserole, behind the half-dozen rats that Nimona had been keeping in the crisper like popsicles, but the only new thing that his search reveals is a single lettuce leaf.

He heaves a sigh and hoists himself upright again on the countertop. It’s not that there aren’t other alternatives to meatloaf, but it’s one of the few portable meals he can make that both he and Goldenloin will enjoy.

(“I won’t die if you leave,” said Goldenloin, ignoring the bandages and beeping machines that surrounded him. “I promise.”

Ballister had looked to the nurse. "It's unlikely," she said, almost apologetically. “The biggest question had been whether or not he would wake up.”

"Sir Blackheart hasn't eaten," Goldenloin added. Ballister glowered at him. "You look," — Goldenloin broke off and swallowed whatever he had been about to say. “Go home,” he said instead.

In the end, it had been a choice between leaving, or explaining — in gruesome, emotional detail — why he would have preferred to stay, at the expense of food and personal hygiene. Under such circumstances, leaving was more appealing. He disguised himself in order to leave the hospital without attracting the attention of the startling number of reporters loitering outside of the hospital entrance, waiting to hear about either the man who took down the Institution from the outside, or his man on the inside who helped him. He finally convinced a nurse to lend him his spare scrubs until they were a few streets away, and Ballister had worn a hideous brown cloak over his head the entire bumpy, painful cart ride back to his lair. All of the lights were off, dashing hopes he didn’t know that he had that Nimona might return.)

And now he has to turn straight back around again, to go buy eggs because Goldenloin never liked just plain rice or pot pie. Ingrate.

There are a few good markets within walking distance of Ballister’s lair, even taking into account his current injury-induced stiffness. The market on Alchemists’ Street has never been crowded enough for pickpockets to bother lurking, but still attracts enough different walks of life that Ballister doesn’t stand out too much.

The first change he notices on his arrival is the pair of sturdy, staff-wielding individuals framing the entrance. They eye him suspiciously. “What’re you here for?” asks the guard on the left.

Ballister scowls. “Eggs.”

“What you want eggs for?” asks the guard on the right.

“Juggling practice,” he says. “I’m making meatloaf. Have you heard of it? Leftover meats, bread in water, oranges and rosewater…”

“He’s for real,” says the guard on the left to their partner. “Dad made that all the time when I was little.”

“I don’t believe you were ever little,” laughs the guard on the right.

“I’ve never seen you two here before,” Ballister cuts in, seeing the guard on the left opening their mouth again. “What does a local market need security for?”

The guard on the right sobers. “Not too much. Some folks were in here trying to rabble-rouse yesterday, and there’s people passing out information inside. As long as it's just passing things out, they're fine. We're here to make sure no one gets too excited about interrupting folk who just need some clover for their ma’s old soup.”

“I see.” Ballister nods, frowning to himself as he walks past them.

A young woman just inside the market entrance tries to pass him fliers. Ballister takes one and glances at it only long enough to register the woodcut of Nimona as a black fanged dragon that dominates the top half of the paper. He folds it into his pocket to look at later, when he can afford to feel the heavy lump in the pit of his stomach, but as he walks around, he can see other patrons carrying them in their hands. The autumn air hums with their unease and quieter-than-normal conversations, and Ballister is on the receiving end of backwards glances more often than he would like. No one approaches him — no one except for Old Wodeman, hands cupped to receive alms as he rattles off a horoscope he made up on the spot. Ballister thanks him as he always does, places a penny in his knotted hands, and hurries away.

Ballister buys eggs from the wizened old woman whose hen sits in a portable nest at her feet. She gives his metal arm a very long look as she places the eggs into his small wicker basket. When he pays her, she gives him back too much in change, lips parting in a small smile. “It’s buy one, get one free for national heroes and slayers of monsters.”

Ballister’s metal hand clenches around the basket tightly enough that he can hear the wickers begin to splinter. “The only monster I ever fought was the Institution,” he says through gritted teeth. Placing another two coins on the table of her stall, he stalks away so that he doesn’t have to look her in the eye.

“Po-tay-to, po-tah-to,” the egg seller calls after him.

The walk back to his lair is quiet in comparison, although he still takes a few shortcuts through barely-navigable streets in a rougher part of the city to deter anyone who might think he is worth seeking out. He passes by a small square in which a man is standing in front of the blackened wreck of Institution barracks with a microphone in hand, declaiming to a camera which has been balanced on a homemade tripod. Ballister quickens his pace as much as his side will allow, and he doesn’t slow down until he is back in his own home.

The missive from the marketplace sits on the counter, catching at the corner of his eye the entire time that he measures ingredients and prepares the ingredients. Once he’s sprinkled the pot with sugar and placed it in the oven, he finally stops trying to avoid seeing it. The contents are mostly factual, but written in incendiary fashion: the “Great Black Beast” was an escaped Institution experiment, a monstrous perversion of nature that couldn’t help what it was but still needed to be put down for the public good. Ballister is an unsung hero of the common man, and the surviving board of the Institution should answer for their crimes. These are difficult days ahead, etc, etc.

Ballister crumples the paper in his metal hand and sticks it in the garbage chute, where it is met with a bright puff of flame. He crosses his arms and scowls at the stove and the pot therein.

When they were younger, he and Ambrosius (not yet Goldenloin; that would come later) sat in one of the wide stone windowsills of the orphanage, a kerchief with crumbling meatloaf between them and a pile of books to pass the time: introduction to chemistry for Ballister, and a collection of sonnets for Ambrosius. After the sun set, and the air grew colder, Ballister had edged over until he was pressed against the window glass, cold seeping through his clothing there while Ambrosius curled against his other side.

It isn’t a particularly exciting memory. The leftovers used in the meatloaf were on the verge of turning, and Ballister still isn’t sure that it wasn’t responsible for the nausea that had plagued him the next day.

He makes sure to leave the platter in the oven a little longer than he had been planning, just in case. Nimona would have complained about the lack of red (“My favorite color!”), but she isn’t here. And that’s okay.

It’s okay.

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

Ballister’s plans to go straight back to the hospital after the meatloaf finishes cooking are delayed once more by the aftereffects of the battle. This time, it comes in the form of a woman standing on the high stone platform in the middle of the central plaza, through whose crowd Ballister had intended to pass unnoticed. She is surrounded by a thick knot of reporters and journalists, and backed by a number of figures wearing the uniform of the Royal Guards. Around this central formation, a looser crowd of pedestrians stand by, waiting.

The platform in the central plaza has been used in about equal measure for executions, celebrations, and proclamations. It’s obvious at a glance which of the three is responsible for the commotion: the woman is oversized and stout, and her movements are suspiciously stiff. Her head is round, her mouth just a little too wide. Ballister draws his hood down further over his face and joins the crowd as the clock tower strikes for mid-afternoon. When the echo of the bells fades, the town crier begins to bellow.

“The King is dead! Long live the king! The old king perished, but the new king will take up his mantle, passed down to the next generation as it has ever been. Long live King Isabel!”

Ballister frowns. The King’s daughter is only … six, seven on the outside. Young enough to still believe in Santa Claus.

The crowd begins to murmur, microphones and vellum notepads raised towards the platform. It doesn’t take long for someone’s voice to rise above the general swell of sound. “A child? Now?”

The town crier clears her throat with a noise like wire scraping over a metal fence. The voices of the crowd only grow louder. Ballister tucks his bundle of meatloaf and notes under his arm and covers his ears as she opens her mouth again and emits the piercing scream of an anguished fox.

The voices of the crowd rise for a moment, then fall away. When they are silent, the town crier ceases, and Ballister uncovers his ears. She speaks again in a more human voice. “She will not rule alone. Her Highness Isabel will be guided in her new post by a regent, selected from those members of the customary pool who are currently not under investigation.”

The “customary pool” …the careful phrasing leaves Ballister with little doubt that she means members of the Institution. At one point in the kingdom’s history, it had referred to the aristocratic lords and ladies, but they had been relegated to judicial positions and local government by the time that Ballister was old enough to go to the library on his own.

The crowd starts to talk again, louder and more chaotic and beginning to shout at the crier. She looks as uneasy as someone of her kind can. Ballister can see the faces of the Royal Guards grow grimmer behind her. He wonders whether he should stay, to stay abreast of what’s happening.

A man shoves by him, jostling the arm in its sling, and Ballister cries out involuntarily. He becomes aware, again, of the healing wound in his side, the cast on his arm, the bruises on his body, the tenuous grip that he has on his bag.

A reporter from the crowd holds up her microphone to the town crier as Ballister pushes through the crowd towards the edges of the plaza. He doesn’t hear the question, but whatever it is, the town crier’s answer is an ambiguous “That will be decided in the coming days”. Then the discontent of the people around him overwhelms the voice of the town crier enough that he can’t make out her voice anymore, and he turns his attention away, to the hospital.

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

The hospital secretary recognizes him when he arrives. “He’s doing fine, sir,” she says before he can ask. “He’s been dozing since you left.”

The door to Goldenloin’s room is closed. Ballister looks in through the narrow window, metal hand to the glass. Goldenloin is awake, sort of: he is still and pale and propped up against a pile of pillows, gazing at the opposite wall, but the eye that isn’t covered by bandages is open. His hands are folded over a large book lying open in his lap. Ballister opens the door, resolutely ignoring the nervous fluttering in his stomach. The clatter of the hallway outside drops away as the door closes; the room is stifling, the still and silence interrupted only by a regular beeping to indicate pulse on the monitor, and the hum of background machinery at work.

Goldenloin turns his head at the click of the door, and his face shifts enough that Ballister would consider calling it a pleased expression. “I didn’t die,” he says.

He sounds better than he looks. Ballister smiles. Goldenloin's hands are atop the blanket, too far away to reach easily, and so Ballister holds more tightly to the dish of food in his hand instead. "Good. Where did the nurse put your chart?"

Goldenloin raises a limp hand to indicate the countertop of medical supplies across the room. The room is too dark, Ballister thinks, as he crosses to retrieve the chart (shark-free this time). He's grateful that his own injuries weren’t enough to keep him here for more than a few nights. Not that his headquarters are much better, but they’re _his_. There's comfort in that.

He wonders where Goldenloin will go, once he is healed enough to be moved. He doesn't have anywhere like that, as far as Ballister knows: he's never left the Institution and their standard-issue barracks.

He wonders what Goldenloin would think of Ballister's own headquarters.

He can only make out a few specifics of the chart. The nurses' notes are neatly written, but Ballister's a villain, not a doctor, and the terminology is quite different. The line graph that the nurse has filled out is trending upwards, though, so he hopes that that's a good sign.

The longer that he attempts to study the chart, the more persistent the feeling is that he's just stalling. The longer that he stands and examines the chart, the longer he can put off turning around and attempting to have a conversation with the man. It had been easier yesterday: life or death panic, and the resultant relief, have a way of smoothing conversation.

"Ballister."

He flips to the next page of his chart as he turns around. Goldenloin is looking at him, hands clasped. Ballister's mouth goes dry. "Yes?"

"Did you bring meatloaf with you?"

Oh. Ballister sets down the clipboard. "I was planning to make it a few days ago. It seemed easiest, and ... I remembered that you liked it."

Goldenloin is making a peculiar expression. Once upon a time, Ballister would have known what it meant, but between the bandages and the stitches and the years he can’t quite tell. "What?"

"The monster clawed my stomach," says Goldenloin. He pats his side gingerly. "She didn't actually rupture anything, but I can't eat right now."

Ballister opens his mouth, and closes it. “I … didn’t think of that. Perhaps you can still smell it. It’s not quite the same as eating …”

Goldenloin winces.

“…Maybe not.” He crosses the room and hides the plate underneath the chair next to the bed. Then he sits.

Goldenloin follows his movements with his good eye, gaze traveling from Ballister’s metal arm to the hand in a sling to the care that he takes when lowering himself into the chair. “Are you all right?” he asks. “She injured you, too.”

“I’m fine. I’ll be fine in a few days,” Ballister says. “It’s just my arm. And you?”

“Dr. Fayadse is going to move me to a recovery room at the end of the week. I can’t go home even if I wanted to — your friend made sure of that.” Goldenloin’s frown is made more pronounced by the line of stitches dragging at the skin down his cheek.

“Did you ever really think of the barracks as home?” Ballister asks, honestly curious.

Goldenloin sticks a slip of paper into his book and closes it. “It wasn’t terrible. I had my own things, and a bunk bed.”

Ballister raises an eyebrow. “For one person?”

“I had a desk underneath with a fishbowl.” Goldenloin looks away. His fingers twist into the sheets of his bed.

Ballister nods. “I don’t have bunk beds,” he says. “I do have a guest bedroom, if you would prefer that.”

“Do you have many guests?”

“Not recently.”

Goldenloin is quiet for longer than Ballister would have expected. He finally gives a slow, stiff nod, although Ballister thinks that the stiffness is due more to physical injury than any attempt at dignity. “Thank you. I’d like that,” he says.

Ballister places a hand very, very gently on his shoulder.

They don’t speak for a while. Ballister pulls out his notebook and opens it up to the next clean page. Most of his previous plans are now outdated — which is for the best, he reminds himself — and he casts about for his next big project.

He ends up spending a lot of time trying not to look at Goldenloin instead. The page stays blank, save for a few random scribbles and a reminder to himself to maybe call Dr. Blitzmeyer to see if she has any ideas. It isn’t that he can’t stay focused on one thought; he’s having a hard time thinking about anything at all. Everything is a blank.

He wonders where Nimona is now.

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

Ballister visits the hospital for at least a few hours for the next four days. Sometimes, he brings food, although he’s careful to make sure that it doesn’t smell, and that it falls at a reasonable medium on the spectrum between foods that Goldenloin can’t stand, and foods that he will stuff himself sick with if he gets the chance (peppermint and salsa are on the first list, and ice cream and soda pop are on the second).

Talking becomes a little easier as the week goes on. Ballister tries to walk the line between grumpy and teasing, with moderate success: one doesn’t feel quite right anymore, and the other is too comfortable and easy. Goldenloin tells him that the goldfish who lived in the fish tank under his bed was named Butterball, and they have a moment of silence for Butterball’s fiery demise. They find out that they both read the latest _Gwalchmai_ novel and thought that the writing style was far inferior to the original series. The next day, Ballister brings his copy of the book to the hospital. When one of the nurses comes to change Goldenloin’s bandages, he is trying hard not to re-injure his side laughing at Goldenloin’s dramatic reading of the prose.

One morning, he opens the door to Goldenloin's room and discovers that someone has placed a small television on the medicine cart. Goldenloin points at it. "They're going to announce the regent to the new king soon," he explains. "I asked a nurse to bring it in."

Ballister nods, and settles into the chair next to the bed to watch. They sit in silence through a few commercials, and the weather report, up to the flashing _Breaking News_ headline. The announcement is broadcast from a small park in an unfamiliar part of the city, relayed by reporters standing in front of an orange-tinted town crier. The name that the reporter gives is unfamiliar, but when a photograph appears on one side of the screen, Goldenloin's face darkens. For a moment, he looks like a stranger.

“I remember her. One of the Director’s secret lieutenants,” he says.

“Secret lieutenants?” Ballister asks. He thought that he had a fairly good idea of what sort of organization the Director had run, but this is new.

Goldenloin gives him a sidelong glance. “I thought she was just a technician in the explosives division until I saw her in the wing where we tried to keep your sidekick.”

Oh. Now it makes sense. “Nimona,” he says. “Although she felt more like a hurricane than a sidekick.”

“I’m… I’m sorry,” says Goldenloin quietly. He reaches out and tries to take Ballister’s hand. With only one eye now, his depth perception is off, and his fingers fall short of their mark.

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

During the parts of the day when he isn’t at the hospital, Ballister takes walks through the city — usually in disguise, after the incident with the old woman. The autumn is carrying on, which means that it’s cold enough for him to wear gloves and long sleeves without getting too many strange looks. The gloves are fine black leather. He stole them from a jeweler-turned-evil-wizard a few years ago, and they’ve been his favorites ever since. With them on, and his arm in a more discreet sling, there’s nothing to stop him from taking long detours on the way back from his lair to the hospital, and back again.

He first notices the posters while he is on one of these walks, midday on the ninth day after Nimona attacked the Institution. They are done in a neat blackletter script that went out of fashion years ago. They’re everywhere — the blank walls of public buildings, telephone poles, and the blackened ruins of Institution buildings — often accompanied by a group of curious bystanders. He even finds a small crowd surrounding one at the front of a tavern; quietly, when everyone knows that the only reason for a crowd to gather in front of a tavern is because someone has been or is just about to be thrown out through the door. Ballister edges his way around the crowd towards the doors of the bar, where the barkeep stands with her hands on her hips to face the crowd.

“What’s all this about down here, the regulations’ n’ such?” asks one man, as Ballister tries to lean over him to see what exactly the poster is. He manages to catch a glimpse of a few words — “ _offensive weaponry must be carefully evaluated_ ” — before he is jostled and loses his place.

“It’s not to do with alcohol,” explains the barkeep, running a hand through her frizzy blue hair. “I’ve already told you. It’s not to do with this tavern, it’s about the Institution.”

Ballister frowns.

“You mean to say the regulation’s for them as is doing the regulating?” asks the large man in the crowd, a frown of concentration appearing on his face.

“ _Yes_ ,” says the barkeep.

The large man turns to the crowd. “It’s all right,” he announces. A collective murmur of relief goes through the dozen or so people gathered around the doors. Most of them amble back in through the doors. A few stick around, eyes running back and forth over the text of the poster; but there is now enough room for Ballister to get a closer look and read it properly.

> **Disputation on the Power and Purpose of the Institution,**

the heading reads. Below it, in smaller writing:

> _Out of love for the truth and from a desire to actually talk about what happened, we intend to defend the following statements in the kingdom once ruled by the Institution. Therefore we ask those who cannot be present and dispute in person because they are cowards to do so in their absence by letter. Those who cannot dispute in person because they are dead need not attend._

Ballister raises his eyebrows as he continues down the paper. The contents of the paper read less like the academic essay promised by the title than an angry screed such as might have been penned by … well, by himself. Maybe not himself right now, but himself from a year ago, certainly. The paper starts off with recent events, though it avoids mentioning either himself or Goldenloin directly. And it works backwards from there: from the Institution’s practice of “tax collection” on behalf of the King to experimental weapons, biological experiments, fearmongering, hiring out the Institutional army to defend the kingdom, and, of course, assassinations of both life and character. The list is exhaustive, and includes some grievances (number sixty-seven, _The powers which the Institution claims are the greatest deterrent to threats to the kingdom are actually only deterrents when other kingdoms know about them, rather than being hidden even from the King himself, as confirmed by his closest associates_ ) that even Ballister didn’t know about.

He reaches the bottom of the paper, where there is a flourish and a well-practiced signature:

> _With intention to defend the above statements,_   
>  _Ballister Blackheart._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ballister Blackheart continues to be confused for a while, and then becomes slightly less confused.

The blood drains from his head. He reads over the signature several times to make sure that he’s not seeing things incorrectly, but it remains his handwriting claiming ownership of the text above.

He leans on the solid wooden doorway and pulls himself inside the bar. Although it’s only a little past noon outside, the interior is already dark, with the occasional gap in the beams of the roof that permits a crack of sunlight to slice through the thick stale air and strike one of the chairs that are mostly empty this early in the day. There’s a few people around the bar; Ballister recognizes about half of them as just having come in from the crowd outside. He finds the barkeep by her hair when she leans across the bar to collect someone’s change off the other side. Ballister finds a gap between two slender fishlike women at the bar and squeezes himself in. He holds up a glove-covered hand and waits for the barkeep to spot him.

“What can I get you?” she asks.

“That poster outside,” Ballister says. “Where did it come from?”

She shrugs. “Hell if I know. Damned thing just showed up here this morning, and I thought well, it’s a public venue. I’m just giving the public a platform to voice their opinions. Not the usual platform, but …”

“When did it go up?”

The barkeep turns away for a moment to refill someone’s tankard with a suspicious purple liquid from the tap. “Wasn’t there when I opened up this morning. Didn’t know about it until Jarred kicked up a fuss about it because he’s too cloud-headed to realize that ‘jaderoot’s not spelled the same way as ‘draft beer’.”

Ballister frowns. “Thank you,” he says, and slides off the stool. The world swims before him, too much to blame on just the hazy atmosphere of the tavern. “Excuse me.”

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

Goldenloin takes a full day longer than Dr. Fayadse predicted to be able to stand upright without falling over, but eventually, he is ready to leave the hospital, and Ballister executes his first plan that involves absolutely no publicity stunts or calculated mayhem. There was a moderate amount of mayhem, initially, but the delay means their departure will coincide with the coronation of the new king. He can take Goldenloin back to the lair while most of the city’s population is either at the secondary palace, or watching the event on televisions indoors.

“I’m not sure this degree of precaution is necessary,” Goldenloin says for the third time today — this time, in reference to the knot into which Ballister is winding his hair. Ballister doesn’t bother to respond. The bandages and new-forming scars make his face less recognizable, but his hair remains distinctive and far too noticeable. Ballister pins it in place and tugs a woolen cap over the finished product.

The nurse returns with several sheets of paper, a bundle of bandages, and a small ceramic jar in her arms. “You’ll need to sign yourself out,” she says. “Change the bandages at sunrise and sunset, and clean the wounds with this cream. You should come back in a few days to check in.”

“We’ll see how he’s doing,” Ballister says, ignoring the way that Goldenloin gives him a bemused look. “Thank you very much for everything,” He clasps her hands in an inadequate attempt to convey gratitude and awe. Goldenloin smiles and pats her back and then staggers and leans heavily on her until Ballister wraps his metal arm around Goldenloin’s waist, transferring most of his weight to his own shoulder instead of the poor nurse.

The cart and horse that Ballister arranged to take them away are waiting in front of the hospital. (More or less. The alleged horse is actually a fat donkey, but they’re just trying to get to the front door before the coronation ceremony is over, not escaping the oncoming hordes, so Ballister is willing to overlook it.) He arranges a blanket and a few pillows on the bottom of the cart and deposits Goldenloin on top of them. Sitting on the floor next to him takes a little more effort than it did when he was younger and not as injured, but he manages all right.

“Where are we going?” Goldenloin asks. He is clearly nervous as the cart rattles away from the cobblestone roads onto a less well-maintained dirt street. The dirt road is lined by shabby thatched houses; the only other figures on the street are a pair of dogs nosing at fast food wrappers and an old woman sitting on her front stoop with a basket of wool and a drop spindle. Ballister knows that the emptiness can only work in their favor, as planned, but even to him it feels slightly sinister.

“You didn’t think I lived somewhere easy to get to, did you?” Ballister asks. The cart’s back wheel runs over a small ditch in the road, jolting them both. Goldenloin stifles a cry of pain. Ballister holds him in place with a hand on his shoulder. “Watch where you’re taking us,” he snaps at the driver.

“This isn’t my first time on the wounded warrior transportation circuit, hon,” the driver replies. “It hurts ‘em more if we keep making big sweeps to avoid little potholes. Trust me.”

Ballister scowls. “If he dies, I will blame you.”

The driver cracks the donkey’s reins and doesn’t look back. “That’s fair.”

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

The guest bedroom has been set up for company for the first time in years, but it’s only mid-afternoon when they arrive at the front door, so Ballister deposits Goldenloin onto the living room couch instead. The springs are a little worn out, because nice furniture is hard to come by when one is a public enemy, but the fabric is soft and there’s more light here than in the guest room.

Once he’s sure that Goldenloin isn’t going to fall off the couch or faint, Ballister turns on the rice cooker in the kitchen (for Goldenloin) and puts leftover pizza in the oven (for himself). While he waits for lunch, he remembers that they’re missing one of the biggest political celebrations in recent memory, goes back into the living room, and turns the television on low. Goldenloin is already asleep again.

The news anchor on the television is standing in front of a large crowd, in a large open area that Ballister recognizes as the secondary palace where the coronation is being held. The banners are mostly black, to honor the abrupt death of the King and several key members of his cabinet, and the few overdressed aristocrats milling about in the background are also wearing dress shirts with one black sleeve.

There’s also an unusual amount of movement and noise from the crowd, given the occasion. Could the formal part of the coronation be over already?

The timer on the rice cooker dings in the kitchen, but Ballister remains seated on the arm of the couch. He turns the volume up a couple of notches, just enough to make out the anchor’s words.

“Witnesses have reported several members of the extended Royal Family fleeing the scene with Princess Isabel, including the Duke of Islington and Sir Jeremiah Lightfoot. Here at News Channel 6, we have not been able to get visual confirmation of any of these reports.”

“What,” says Ballister.

“Baronet Cienaga, what can you tell us about today’s protests?” says the anchor to one of the aristocrats behind her.

The Baronet wrings her hands, eyes darting back and forth. She doesn’t say anything for a moment. The anchor starts to turn back to the camera when the Baronet seizes the microphone. “They were only trying to protect us! Don’t you see?” she cries, and then hurls herself into the middle of the crowd behind the anchor.

 _“What,”_ says Ballister.

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

Goldenloin wakes up about halfway through the afternoon. Ballister moves to shut off the television so he won't have to worry about the news immediately, but Goldenloin insists that he needs to know what's going on. As soon as he gets the gist of the story, he begins to fidget and make abortive attempts to stand up. “I have to go to the palace,” he says. “My kingdom needs me!”

“Not right now it doesn’t.” Ballister pushes him back down onto the couch.

“As a symbolic gesture of solidarity. I know there’s no monster to fight, but I could still,” — he mimes fencing with an invisible enemy — “show the people I’m there for them. I’m not with the Institution anymore.”

“You can’t even walk on your own right now. How could you possibly ‘be there’ for anyone?” Ballister observes without thinking.

A cloud crosses Goldenloin’s face; eyes downcast, he turns away. Ballister listens to the echo of his own words hanging in the air and winces. “Never mind that. I,”— He sighs, and mutes the television. Goldenloin doesn’t protest this time, just shifts his legs, giving Ballister enough room to sit down by his hip. “You haven’t been there for me before, but you were this time. I appreciate it. I’m sure you’ve protected other people before, too.”

“I saved thirteen people from an enchanted boar last spring,” Goldenloin says. It comes out petulant, pleading for recognition.

Ballister definitely hasn’t missed that tone. There’s nothing endearing about it (that he can put his finger on, anyway). “I heard about that.”

“I didn’t kill it. I didn’t think you would want me to.”

Ballister looks down at his own hands and nods. He runs his metal fingers over the rough fabric of the cast on his left wrist. “Thank you.” Pause. He feels like he should say something more. “Would you like any tea?”

Goldenloin blinks up at him. “Yes. Please. I drink herbal teas now.”

Ballister pulls a face. He would make a remark about not knowing Goldenloin anymore, but the subject is still too close for comfort, so he settles on, “I only have ginseng, sorry. Nimona,” — a rush of sadness — “Nimona drank everything else.”

Goldenloin mumbles something else, but Ballister is already in the living room. He glances at the news, which is still covering the coronation riot. It would appear that the Princess Isabel is safe and unharmed, and Ballister is glad. Whatever his feelings about her family, or her scientific value as a candidate for cloning, the girl is seven years old. She doesn’t deserve the brunt of any fallout that may come her way. He lights the stove under the kettle and begins to clean the area for the fourth time in as many days. The counter is as clean as the least-dirty rag in his possession, plus a small amount of magically enhanced soap from the farmer’s market, can get it; but he’s always spilling things without realizing it, so one more wipe-down can’t hurt.

The kettle begins to whistle, and Ballister pours the tea. “Ballister,” Goldenloin calls from the next room.

As evenly as he can, Ballister collects the two mugs of steeping tea and brings them back to the living room. He sets them down on the thick tree stump that serves as a side table, which leaves the arm that isn’t in a sling free to help Goldenloin with his quest to rearrange the cushions so he can sit upright.

Ballister passes him the tea. “Do you need anything else?"

Goldenloin shakes his head and points at the television.

There’s a different reporter this time, standing in a large crowd of civilians gathered in front of the secondary palace. Amidst the sea of heads, there are a few signs and posters, including one that appears to be made out of a rug on a wooden frame. Below the rug-sign, just behind the reporter’s head, is a group of demonstrators, rallying behind a slightly smaller sign with a portrait on it.

Ballister’s portrait, to be precise. And underneath, thick gothic script spells out King Blackheart.

Ballister stares, heart pounding. There he is, on his television screen, for other scientists and ordinary citizens and Princess Isabel to see. How did he get there? Why is he there in the first place? He hopes that seeing his name in unexpected public places doesn’t develop into a pattern.

“You’re on TV,” says Goldenloin.

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

At least, Ballister consoles himself, he’s not actually on television. No one can possibly think that he’s actually trying to use the smoking wreckage of the kingdom’s political infrastructure to further a new career path, can they? It’s just a few people with some strange ideas in their heads.

Of course, Goldenloin still wants an explanation.

“I swear, I don’t know where anyone got that idea,” Ballister repeats. “I’ve never suggested it myself.”

“Then lay low until it goes away,” Goldenloin suggests.

He takes Goldenloin’s suggestion to heart for the next week and a half, only leaving his headquarters to buy food and more gauze, or to take Goldenloin to the hospital. He gets his own arm x-rayed, and is informed that he can leave it out of the sling, although the cast will have to stay on for another month. But Ballister has dealt with his entire arm being blown off, and he gets to keep his left arm at the end of all of this, and that’s reason enough to celebrate in his opinion. He stops just short of skipping out of the doctor’s office, as that would be both uncomfortable and undignified. On the short walk from the doctor’s office to the hospital, he buys a broadside from a small child bundled in half a dozen sweaters against the chill. It’s the second informal newspaper of its ilk that he’s noticed in the last week, although it’s printed on better-quality paper. _Institution Director Indicted!_ reads the headline. Below it is an artistically rendered impression of the Director. He blinks at the title, but apparently enough people wanted to see the Director put on trial that it had become a moot point as to whether or not she was actually still alive to stand charges. The column to one side of the page informs him that the _Vice-Director Of Experimental Biology To Stand Trial As Well_ — the intended regent for Princess Isabel. A small quote inset in the main article claims that Ballister told “the press” that the only monster he ever fought was the Institution. Ballister pauses at that — he’s sure that he only ever said so to the egg-seller, but maybe she’s decided to enter the field of print media.

However that quote was obtained, it’s true, so Ballister doesn’t let it linger too long in his thoughts as he goes to collect Sir Goldenloin from the hospital so that they can return to his headquarters. Goldenloin is sitting in the waiting room, reading the same broadside, elbows resting on the armrest of a sky blue wheelchair. He looks up when Ballister joins him.

“Have you been talking to reporters?” he asks Ballister, who shakes his head.

“There’s plenty of real news besides just me saying things. They should write about that. Um, nurse…?” he adds to the man in a white jacket sitting next to him.

"Sure," says the nurse, putting down his magazine. He grabs the handles on the back of Goldenloin’s wheelchair, and the three of them navigate the maze of plastic chairs down to the front entrance. Goldenloin can get himself upright, but it’s still a chore for him to stay that way. This is easier.

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

Goldenloin is thinking of saying something stupid, Ballister can tell. He’ll level long, meaningful stares in Ballister’s direction whenever they’re in the same room, or he’ll slip things into conversation, references to things from before the tournament. “Do you remember the pine tree outside the window of your old room?” and “I know you know how to do this, you helped me study basic wound care at the academy.” Sometimes Ballister will give in and let him talk about the old days, and sometimes he’ll just respond with a “hmm” and go back to his chemicals or his chalkboard or his attempts not to wince as he bandages the messy part of Goldenloin’s face where his eye used to be.

He knows that at some point they will have to talk about the fact that they don’t seem to be enemies any longer, but as far as he’s concerned, he would rather hold off on starting that conversation until everything around them has settled down a little bit.

Instead of talking, he makes soup for Goldenloin that doesn’t come out of a can, and pulls the lever by the fireplace that will topple another log onto the fireplace, and Goldenloin throws the other half of his blanket over Ballister as they sit down to dinner together. Ballister frowns over the small collection of newspapers that he gathered when he bought food earlier in the day. He’s flipping over to a new broadside when he sees his own name on the back page and pauses.

Goldenloin touches the back of his wrist, drawing his attention away. “Can we talk?” says Goldenloin.

There it is. “Not now,” Ballister cuts him off, punctuated by a loud crack from the wood in the fireplace.

“Ballister,” —

—“Look.” He drapes the newspaper over Goldenloin’s bowl of soup.

Goldenloin reads. His eye widens. “When did you do any of that?”

“I didn’t! The only times I’ve been out without you have been to buy supplies,” Ballister defends himself. “I’m a busy man, when would I have had the time to form a political party?”

“You didn’t _form_ the political party.” Goldenloin points to the article. “But you spoke to the organizers last night, looking ‘heroically battle-weary and ready for action.’” He tilts his head to bring Ballister into his field of vision, as though considering the merits of such a description.

“Obviously they’re mistaken. I was in the lab last night,” Ballister points out.

“Science again?” Goldenloin asks.

Ballister scowls. “It’s not just ‘science’. I’m trying to devise a way to safely dispose of all of the jaderoot that the Institution has been stockpiling.”

Goldenloin folds the paper. Rather than lean over to put it on the side table, he simply lets it float down to the floor. Ballister rolls his eyes — the man is wounded, yes, but sometimes he’s also just plain lazy. “Is that why there was smoke coming over the top of the door?”

"That was a minor miscalculation," Ballister mutters, but he would rather admit to having accidentally melted one of his beakers than let Goldenloin try to talk about his feelings again.

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

Ballister had expected it to be more difficult to find a potentially disruptive burgeoning political organization, but the next day, the Society for the Responsivle Redistribution of Scientific Advancements posts a recruitment ad in an established newspaper, including an address that turns out to be a two-story house painted a deep ochre hue, wedged between a library and a small collection of wooden shacks. There's even a hastily-painted sign out front when he arrives the following morning. Ballister tries not to look too out of his depth when the door opens and a stocky bronze-skinned woman with a name tag identifying her as Dr. Swanfoot, PhD., pumps his hand.

“Sir Blackheart, thank god you’re here. We kept getting your voicemail yesterday, and Jaz really wants to know what you think of our campaign posters. They’re a little rushed, but it’s better to get them out as soon as possible. I heard there’s a few chapters of the Smith’s Guild who want to run Kumeta on a socialist redistribution platform, and while I don't think that she's actually going to run, it's still better to get a head start, just in case. I ask you, does the kingdom really need ready-made blast-weapons technology available to the general public?” She drags him down the hallway and into a tiny office that still has imprints in the floor from where a bed and dresser had been until quite recently. The tiny, wrinkled old man at the desk breaks into a smile when he sees them.

“The press conference has been set up as requested,” he jumps in. “Here, what do you think?”

“I think you’re mistaken,” Ballister tries to explain; looking down at the stiff piece of paper that has appeared in his possession. It features a picture of himself clutching a test tube of a green glowing substance in one hand.

“About what? Is that not the right color? I’m a neurosurgeon, I don’t know what you experimental chemists get up to,” says Dr. Swanfoot.

“No! I’m not — who told you to make these?” he asks, brandishing them at her.

“You did,” they say in unison.

Ballister backs away. He doesn’t need this, not right now. “But I’m not — I didn’t — when was I here?” he asks desperately. “I don’t want any of this.”

Dr. Swanfoot looks confused. "But the Declaration of Intent!" she says. "'Away then, with those who cry, "Peace for the kingdom!" and do not bring peace. Make way for those who cry, "Truth! Justice!" and act on those principles. The kingdom can only be saved from the evils perpetrated by the Institution if we are willing to confront them as deformed parodies of good intentions, and bring them back into line with those good intentions.' Did you forget?"

"Did I write that?" Ballister asks, trying to recall more clearly the posters hanging all over the city.

"Lines ninety-three to ninety-five of the Declaration," Jaz offers.

"Which reminds me," says Dr. Swanfoot. "We've been having a little debate here at the Society headquarters about exactly what you meant by the lines about the role of private scientific investigations in the defense of the kingdom. Some of us, myself included, think you're talking about abolishing private research altogether, on the off chance that private research groups develop the same sort of secret facilities that resulted in the great black dragon."

She's utterly serious, looking at him like she expects him to have answers. And Ballister does remember nodding along as he read that part of the mysterious Declaration of Intent, so he tries his best. "I don't think that's what the author meant at all," he says. "Research on harmful weapons needs to be contained, especially in the city. If a single thing went wrong at the Institution, they could have poisoned thousands of people!"

Dr. Swanfoot nods. "That's what I keep telling Dr. Caerwent, but she insists it's only applicable to government properties. She's out to lunch right now; you can look at our review of succession laws while we wait for her to get back..."

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

Goldenloin isn’t in the living room when Ballister gets back, and he nearly has a heart attack ( _he’s gone; he’s been kidnapped; he’s tried to strike out on his own_ ) before he hears a light thunk coming from the guest bedroom. The door is open; when he walks in, he sees Goldenloin lying half-propped-up in bed, a throwing knife in his good hand and a pile of used tissues on the bedside table. Ballister turns around: thirteen identical knives have embedded themselves in the wall opposite the bed, at low, lazy angles.

“Why are you destroying my wall?” Ballister yanks the closest knife out of the wall.

Goldenloin drops the hand holding the knife into his lap. “I’m practicing my aim.” He indicates his eye.

Ballister wants to point out that there are other, less destructive ways that he could go about testing his depth perception, ways that don’t include flinging sharp objects at the ambient architecture (where Ballister is letting him stay, _without any restrictions or limitations_ , he might add). He wants to tell Goldenloin that he shouldn’t strain himself, especially not with the long and probably painful movements required to throw knives with any degree of accuracy.

He remembers the first time he tried to joust against a quintain after his arm had healed enough to do so, and he sighs, and lies down on top of the blankets next to Goldenloin instead. “Tell me next time. You’ll need an actual target.”

Goldenloin sets the knife on the bedside table with a clink. A moment later, Ballister feels a hand on his head, fingers winding through his hair. “Thank you,” he hears, so quietly that it takes a moment to process that he heard anything at all. Then, with less of a quiver, “Did you find out how you managed to be in two places at once?”

Ballister turns over, so that he is at eye level with the bandages on Goldenloin’s shoulder. “There was some miscommunication,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“I couldn’t convince anyone that I’m not the person they’ve been talking to for the last two weeks. I think they thought I was having a moment of panic. And then I ... became distracted.”

Goldenloin’s hand stops halfway through combing his hair. “Oh?”

Ballister shuts his eyes. His head hurts. “I argued with a few particle physicists about what to do with the Institution's surviving projects, and then they made me stay for a strategy meeting. According to the head of the Society for the Responsible Redistribution of Scientific Advancement, I’m the only public figure that the kingdom trusts to have their best interests at heart right now. There’s nothing to worry about, I don’t have any real competing candidates, just general opposition to win over.”

The pause is longer this time, silence broken only by the fire in the hearth to protect against the autumn wind and the sounds of two bodies breathing.

“That’s ridiculous. The monarchy doesn’t work like that.”

Ballister shrugs. “You always see things as simpler than they are, remember?”

Goldenloin doesn’t answer. His fingers brush past Ballister’s head, settling on his shoulder. “Maybe,” he admits.

Ballister’s failure to show up for the press conference that Dr. Swanfoot mentioned hasn’t seemed to put a cramp in anyone’s plans. He hears about it on the news, although there is no video footage of the event. And it’s become increasingly difficult to leave the house without attracting attention Most of it is handshakes, flowers, and the occasional hug, which are bizarre but not unpleasant. Less pleasant are the dark looks from gray-cloaked figures who generally hurry away when he draws near. On one occasion, he is walking back from the Alchemists’ Street Market when he notices a solitary figure shadowing him (wearing an Institution uniform, _really_ ). He hurries into a crowd of people watching a street performer; when he risks taking a look back, his view of the figure is blocked by a burly dock worker, and then the figure is gone. The close call shakes him.

It’s time for a different approach, he decides.

“Where are you going?” asks Goldenloin.

Ballister draws his cloak about him with a motion that sends it swirling around his feet. “I’m apparently scheduled to lead a demonstration at the Lorenzo Plaza this afternoon.”

“You’re not thinking of showing up?”

“Of course not.” A glance in the mirror assures him that his fearsome ginger beard is still in place. His hair and forehead are covered by a wide-brimmed straw hat. All he needs is a wooden staff and workman’s gloves to complete his disguise.

Goldenloin narrows his eye. “I don’t believe you.”

“Don’t ask silly questions, then.” Ballister ducks into his laboratory to retrieve the wooden bar in the closet that usually supports hangers full of lab coats and protective plastic sheeting. It’s been roughed up and stained by enough science over the years that it could reasonably pass for a well-used walking stick. “I’ll be back in time to change your bandages. There’s water on the side table and rice and eggs under the table. Don’t look in the fridge. You understand the remote control now, right?”

“I’m not completely helpless,” Goldenloin protests.

Ballister gives him a look, but he brushes the uninjured part of Goldenloin's cheek with the back of his hand all the same. “Take care of yourself.”

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

The crowds in the Lorenzo Plaza envelope Ballister the instant that he steps within the boundaries of the square. There are really quite a lot of people — more than he had been expecting, based on the size and state of the Society’s campaign offices. Most of the attendees are jubilant and barely into adulthood, which makes him feel old and cross, but there are enough greybeards and weather-beaten older women around to sooth his conscience or whatever. He slips between two large groups of what appear to be displaced pirates, pushing his way towards the center stage where, it seems, most of the attention is focused. If the false Ballister Blackheart is going to make an appearance, he would bet his fake ginger beard that he’ll find the impostor around here.

He isn’t the first person to get up onto the platform and make a speech that day, though. The first is Dr. Swanfoot, wearing light robes better suited to desert summers than the current temperature. Ballister takes advantage of the distraction that she provides to snake his way further towards the front. He scans the crowd for anyone with dark hair and a telltale arm. Or possibly a telltale glove. He isn’t sure which one the impostor will be wearing.

Dr. Swanfoot has reached a point in her speech patterns that suggests she’ll be wrapping it up soon when Ballister sees: his own face, barely recognizable in profile because unlike some knights, he doesn’t spend a whole lot of time in front of a mirror. Ballister shoves aside the last burly longshoreman between himself and the other Ballister, grabs his double by the arm.

“Excuse me,” he says.

His double turns their head to meet his eyes. It’s profoundly unsettling. Ballister resists the urge to step back, look away and pretend that this whole thing didn’t happen and is therefore not something that he needs to deal with. “I’m afraid I don’t have much time to talk right now,” says the impostor. “If you stay right here, I promise I’ll get back to address your concerns after I give my speech.”

Ballister tightens his grip on his arm. “I’m not a concerned citizen,” he says. “I’ve discovered your plot, whoever you are.”

The impostor doesn’t respond. Ballister tugs on their wrist; after a moment of resistance, they go easily, letting Ballister haul them away from the crowd and underneath the platform. It isn’t any quieter here, but at least they are less visible. Light makes its way through the generous gaps in the wooden slats of the platform, more than enough for Ballister to make out the details of his own face a foot away, replicated down to the chicken pox scars faded into near-invisibility by his hairline. He tightens his grip on the imposter’s arm to disguise the shaking of his hand.

“Who are you?” he hisses. “What do you think you’re doing?”

The imposter’s mouth twitches, like they can’t decide whether to answer or not. Ballister waits. A certain light to their eyes, a tilt of the head, and _oh_ — he _knows_ that expression.

His heart leaps painfully in his chest. “Nimona?”

She smiles, less toothy than he’s used to. When she speaks, it’s not his voice she uses, but her own. “Hey, boss. Whaddaya think?”

Ballister launches himself forwards, wrapping his arms around the impostor — around Nimona — and her arms turn huge and burly and lift him off of his feet. He refuses to cry, not even a little bit, although his eyes do water when she squeezes too tightly around the bruises on his sides. “Ow,” he protests.

“Sorry.” She puts him down, and when she steps back, she is once again his mirror image.

“I didn’t expect to see you so — how long have you been …” Ballister trails off and trips over his own words. “What are you _doing_?”

“Listen, like I told you, I’m a busy man,” Nimona tells him, suddenly brusque. “But I’ll tell you what, if you meet me back here after the rally, we’ll talk, and I’ll see what I can do to help you.” Her eyes flicker off to the left; Ballister follows her gaze, and sees a gangly pale youth leaning under the platform, making frantic gestures to Nimona to come out and lead already. She waves at him, give me a moment. “Unless you want to take it from here?” she asks him in a low voice.

“ _No._ ”

She shrugs. “Okay with me. See you later.” She flashes him a grin with cat-eyes and sharp teeth, and then she’s gone, hurrying off in a precise imitation of the way that Ballister runs. “I’m coming, Evegeny, don’t worry. The show will go on!”

As soon as she’s out of sight, Ballister sits down in the dirt, hard. The area under the platform might not be any quieter than it is outside, but it’s darker, and free of other people, so no one can see when he covers his face with his hands and tries not to hyperventilate.

Nimona is _here._


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the gang gets down to business, has some feelings, and does some campaigning.

Nimona finds him under the stage again after she’s done making a speech about change and reform that’s … actually quite good. Once he's gotten over the worst of the shock, Ballister catches himself engaging with her words: modifying the grand plans that she presents to her audience in order to give them a few extra nuances and less room for explosions; and when she tells an inspiring anecdote that concludes with a call to examine preconceptions about what is a necessary evil and what's just plain evil masquerading as necessity, he is trying to figure out how best to rewrite the way that dangerous substances are confiscated and then amassed by the Institution, and how to do that differently.

Ballister knows that he shouldn’t assume much about her at this point, but it still surprises him.

“Did you write that speech yourself?” he asks her.

She hauls him along to the back of the stage. “Huh? Come on, do you want to hang out under here all day? You’ve got kind of a lot of enemies for that.”

“No! But listen, we can’t go back to the lab right away,” —

—”Deal. Okay, saddle up, and don’t expect me to do this again.”

Ballister opens his mouth to ask her what she means. Before the words leave his mouth, she shifts, his features blurring and body twisting into a draft horse with a saddle and reins that are precisely the same shade of red as her coat. Horse-Nimona tosses her head and stamps at him impatiently, as if to say _get on with it_.

“Oh,” he says. “Right.”

As soon as he is securely seated, Nimona trots out from underneath the stage, into the low-angled sunlight of afternoon. Ballister pulls his hat down further over his face to shield his eyes, clutches the reins with the hand that isn’t hanging onto his coat-rack-staff, and tries to at least look like he has control over where they’re going.

Nimona takes him away from the plaza and through the city, all the way out past the public library, without stopping or slowing down.

“Wait,” Ballister says. “Stop for a moment.”

She bobs her head and makes a sharp turn into an alley narrow enough that Ballister could touch the walls on either side, if he felt like it. He slides off of her back onto the pavement. Nimona melts into herself again — the version that he’s used to seeing, he corrects himself — and folds her arms across her chest, less boisterous than she was at the rally. “What’s wrong with the lab?” she asks him.

Ballister looks around, ready to hide her from anyone who might recognize her, but as long as no one looks too closely as they walk by the alleyway, they should be all right. “There’s nothing wrong with the lab. I threw out your rats because they started getting moldy. And there’s … ” He hesitates. Goldenloin and Nimona haven’t had a single interaction in which they weren’t actively trying to kill each other. Last time, they had nearly succeeded.

But he also has a very, very recent reminder of how badly things have gone when he hasn't put all of his cards on the table, and Nimona is still watching him, guarded. He’s missed her face. It would be better to have it around. “Sir Goldenloin — the knight from the Institution — survived. He’s staying with me.”

Nimona makes a face like she's swallowed spoiled milk. “Why?”

Ballister swallows. “He’s important to me.”

“You wouldn’t let me kill him,” she recalls, pursing her lips. “And he wouldn’t let the guards hurt you.”

“Yes, he’s …” Ballister trails off. “I didn’t tell him that I saw you outside the hospital last week."

“Why, you’re afraid he’s going to try to finish me off?” Nimona shrugs. “We’ve already established that it doesn’t work.”

Ballister imagines Goldenloin hoisting his sword, trying to fight Nimona in the living room, and his stomach twists in on itself. “Please don’t hurt him.”

Nimona flops onto the ground, barely missing a puddle leftover from the rain yesterday. She pulls her feet in towards herself, sitting cross-legged and looking up at him through her bangs. The rest of her hair has started to grow out, enough to leave a noticeable red fuzz. Ballister wonders how it is that it grows when she appears to have spent most of the last three or four weeks as Ballister Blackheart, but he knows better than to ask for details. “So is he going to be around for a while?” she asks. “Like, in your life?”

It feels odd to be looming over her from such a height: standing in front of her exit from the alley, while she sits with her back to the wall. Ballister moves off to one side so he can kneel down, stiffly. “I don’t know. I hope,”— and then he isn’t sure how to finish that sentence.

“Are you secretly friends?”

Ballister clicks his right hand against the cast on his left. It feels as though he is kneeling over the edge of a deep precipice, albeit in the most unlikely of settings. “No. Yes. We were.”

“Okay…”

“I loved him. I — I still love him.”

Nimona is quiet.

“No one knew. It seemed pointless to mention it to you.” Ballister takes a long breath — his bruised ribs only pain him a little these days. “I didn’t actually mean to — that wasn’t what I wanted to tell you first. I wanted to say I’m sorry for hurting you. You’re still my friend, if you want to be.”

"If I got angry, if I split me in two now, would you do it again?" Nimona asks. She looks down at the ground in front of his knees, not at his face. "Would you try to kill me again?"

He starts to reach out to her before he knows what he’s doing; wants more than anything to give her a hug here in the slightly damp dirt of a gloomy alley and tell her that no one will ever hurt her again. She doesn’t acknowledge his outstretched hand, and he lets it drop, fighting the physical ache in his chest. “I would,” he says. “I would have to.”

Nimona nods, lifts her head and stares straight over his shoulder. “Yeah. That’s why I figured you’d be a good king.”

Ballister does a double-take. He can’t help it. “You did?”

She shrugs. "You care about people. You might spread fake infections to prove a point, but you don't want to actually kill anyone."

“What were you thinking?” he demands. “What if I hadn’t found out what you were doing? Why did you write that paper?”

“Long story,” she says.

“I want to hear it.”

“You would.” She gets up, and holds out her hands to pull him to his feet as well. She hangs onto his metal hand as they leave the alley. “If Sir Goldenloin is staying with you, does that mean he’s a villain now, too?”

Ballister snickers at the thought. “Hardly.”

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

Telling Goldenloin about Nimona is a little harder. She follows him inside his headquarters as a soot-colored mouse, hiding herself in the umbrella stand with her tail just sticking out from the folds of a black umbrella. Ballister turns the problem over in his mind as he makes Goldenloin sit on a real chair so he can unwind the bandages from around his arm and shoulder and head. It’s becoming easier to clean and redress the injuries, with less gore and only mild pained hissing from his patient.

“Are you going to tell me how the rally went?” Goldenloin asks.

“Hold still,” Ballister instructs him, holding his chin in place with one hand so he can swipe alcohol down his cheek uninhibited. “Well. The good news is that I know why half the kingdom thinks that I should be their new king.”

Goldenloin’s mouth twitches into half a smile. Ballister snorts. “Stop that, or you’ll have a permanent smirk.”

He drops the expression. ”What’s the bad news?”

Right on cue, Nimona climbs out of the umbrella stand and prances over in the form of an incredibly fluffy forest cat. Ballister positions himself in front of Goldenloin, arm across his chest to both shield him and restrain him; Goldenloin looks up at him with a slight frown. Nimona sits down on the floor a few feet from the chair and shifts into a human girl with her hands folded in her lap. Ballister can’t help smiling at the sight of her; it feels like a long, long time since he’s seen her most familiar face in their headquarters.

“Hi,” she says, with a small wave.

Goldenloin’s hands come up to pull Ballister away from her, as though he thinks he's even capable of defending himself, let alone both of them at once. All of the color that has been creeping back into his face since he left the hospital drains away, but his voice, when he speaks, is steady. “She — you’re alive. How did you survive?”

Nimona just shrugs. “He says he trusts you,” she tells Goldenloin, jerking her head at Ballister.

Goldenloin nods, although this close, Ballister can see his jaw vibrate as his teeth chatter. “He said the same about you.”

“So you think he’s way too trusting, right?” Nimona says.

“Yes,” Goldenloin spits out.

Nimona looks up at Ballister. “That’s two things in common,” she says.

“Tell him,” says Ballister. He picks up the medical tape from the table by the chair and stretches out a piece long enough to secure the new bandages over Goldenloin’s face. He doesn’t have to tell Goldenloin not to move around this time; he is still staring stiffly at Nimona, hands clenched into useless fists.

“What, the things? One, we think you’re dumb. Don’t make me say the other one. It’s not cool.” Nimona makes a face.

“I meant, tell him what you’ve been up to,” Ballister corrects her.

“I don’t think he’s dumb,” Goldenloin protests.

“Uh-huh,” says Nimona. “It’s story time.”

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

"Once I got better, I was a trout for a while. I got to do that for like, a week, but then this old guy bagged me in his net when I was in the middle of my new school, so I ditched the water and went back with him as a dog. I found out when I was a dog that I didn’t do a good enough job wrecking everything, and there was still gonna be that woman advising your new king." 

She nods at Ballister. "I made sure I didn’t kill the stupid princess, okay? She’s not old enough to know better, so I let her go. But they would’ve tried to start everything over again, and everyone was just gonna let them."

— "They wouldn’t" —

"They _would’ve_. Not enough people were going to say anything.

"Writing everything down, that was easy. Figuring out what to do with it, that was different. I was hanging around the fishing docks when I heard some little kids playing pretend that they were Sir Blackheart and Sir Goldenloin and the Director. The first two kids fought a duel with the Director, and won, and then the Director switched so they were the King, and put you in charge of the Institution.

"I thought that was kind of stupid. It's not just the Director, it's the whole rotten group of them working there. Switching up the boss isn't going to fix that. But it did give me an idea. I thought it was a pretty good one. So I put your signature on my plans and then stuck them up all over the place to see if anyone noticed. I've seen enough of your handwriting to practice it until it looked right."

“People noticed,” says Ballister. “At what point were you going to tell me about this?”

"You were supposed to pick up the slack on that one. You’re a villain, aren’t you supposed to crave power? When those Society for Science people couldn’t find you, and the hospital said you were pretty hurt, I figured you were probably just hiding so no one would come after you while you’re weak," Nimona says, like it's obvious.

“And that’s not a problem for you,” Goldenloin says. "If someone were to try to hurt Ballister expecting him to be injured, and instead they get you..."

Nimona grins. "Then they're in _big_ trouble."

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

Nimona bounces to her feet at the conclusion of her tale. “What do you think? Pretty crafty plan, don’t you think?”

It’s a lot to digest at once. Ballister has sort of worked out parts of it for himself — the impersonation part, mostly — but the sheer scope of it is a little overwhelming. And surprisingly subtle, for Nimona. “It’s certainly something,” he muses.

“We need to talk,” says Goldenloin to Ballister. “Alone,” he adds, with a glance at Nimona.

Nimona frowns at him. “Where do you wanna meet tomorrow, boss?” she asks Ballister. “You don’t have any big appearances planned...”

“I don’t have anything planned until we talk about this further,” he informs her. “Period.”

She says nothing.

“I mean it. You were wrong: I don’t want to be king. I don’t crave power.”

Nimona fidgets. Ballister stares her down. She looks away first, rubbing her arm. “You want me to call the whole thing off?”

“Not … not yet. Just stop it for now.”

She sighs. “I’m gonna go play with the gang of dogs down the street,” she says. “I’ll probably be gone a couple of hours.”

The door shuts behind her; Ballister catches a glimpse of her form dwindling in size before he and Goldenloin are alone in the living room. Goldenloin stares at the door, grip still tight on Ballister’s shirt. Ballister pries his fingers loose as gently as possible and draws him to his feet; together, they make the journey from chair to couch. “She’s gone,” Ballister tells him. “It’s going to be okay.”

“I’m not afraid of her,” Goldenloin informs him.

Ballister lets the statement stand unchallenged. “Of course.”

“You’re going to just bring her back now?”

“Yes.”

Goldenloin draws his knees closer, curling into Ballister’s side and frowning.

Ballister clears his throat. “She’s never used the guest bedroom — I wouldn’t make you leave unless you didn’t want to stay.” The thought of Goldenloin choosing to be alone instead makes him crumple a bit inside, but he would understand.

Goldenloin shakes his head. “I don’t want to leave you again. I just want to know why you trust her so much, even after what she did.”

“The only reason your people caught her was because she came to rescue me, even though she was angry with me.” Ballister grasps Goldenloin’s hands. “I fought the Institution for years without accomplishing as much as I did once she came. And she’s my best friend.”

“She destroyed buildings that still had people in them. The king is dead because of her!”

“After they experimented on her and tortured her until she split in two. You saw what they did. She could have left, but she came back to try to fix things.”

“By inciting unrest and impersonating you. She’s putting you in danger.” Goldenloin tightens his grip on Ballister’s hands.

“I wanted change. I have to do something with it. It’s a risk I’m willing to take,” says Ballister.

“What happens if the kingdom finds out that you’ve been letting a monster impersonate you so that she can become king? They’ll come after you, and I won’t be able to protect you.”

“Do you have a better idea?” asks Ballister.

Goldenloin falls silent. He looks down at the floor, frown lines on his face exaggerated by the light from the open lab door. “No,” he says. “I just wish I did.”

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

It’s still early in the evening, but it’s been a long day. Ballister nods off, and only wakes up when Nimona lets herself back in and shakes his shoulder. “Hey, boss,” she whispers.

“Hnnn,” he mumbles, squinting. His neck is bent at a strange angle, cracking when he tries to straighten up. It takes a moment before he gets his bearings. He is still sitting on the couch, head back against the cushions, good shoulder weighed down by Goldenloin’s head. (He has a sneaking suspicion that there is drool on his shirt, and it's not his own.) Nimona leans over the back of the couch.

“Hey boss, am I going to scare your nemesis if I hang around?” she whispers.

Ballister stretches as much as he can without waking Goldenloin. “Don’t turn into anything bigger than him, please.”

She snorts quietly. “Weenie.”

“You nearly killed him.”

“Doesn’t bother you,” she shoots back.

“It does, but I know you. He doesn’t yet.”

Nimona makes a face that is difficult to decipher in the dark. “Yeah, okay. Night, boss.”

After she vanishes to wherever she goes when she sleeps, Ballister groans and tries to rouse Goldenloin because he is comforted by the way that his body feels pressed against his side, but he knows that it will be a lot less comfortable if they doesn’t move for the rest of the night. He manages to get them both awake enough to stagger to the guest room, where he sets Goldenloin down and then collapses onto the bed himself. Neither of them are large men, so there is plenty of room. By the time he turns out the lamp, Goldenloin is already asleep again.

Lying on his back on the bed, Ballister thinks. He tries to picture himself as king, the way that Nimona seems to see him. The only conclusion he reaches is that his neck would probably snap under the weight of the Royal Crown.

He scraps that image. Not a king, just … a leader. Leading people down the path of truth and science. A pathway to an enormous laboratory full of bubbling beakers and titration filters and machinery that whirs, shows them how to use the Institution’s weapons as energy sources. A pathway where children are not snatched off the streets by the government and trained to be soldiers and knights, but study or play or build things with people from the outside world instead.

A pathway that has, next to all of these things, a laboratory next door to a house big enough for two former knights and a shapeshifter.

Ballister is wide awake. He slides off the bed with as little sound as possible, lets himself out of the room, and hurries to pull on his dressing gown in his own, considerably colder, room. Then he sits down at his desk and starts to draft some plans of his own.

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

True to her word, Nimona does not make any more appearances as Ballister (Or, if she does, then she keeps them quiet enough that he doesn’t know about it). She does do a little hop of glee when he asks her to help him arrange for a speech on the steps of the temporary palace. Nimona flits around the city in various forms, goading, threatening, and cajoling reporters and town criers until everyone knows that Sir Ballister Blackheart will appear at the wreckage site of the primary royal palace to discuss his recent campaign for king.

On the appointed date, Nimona joins him on the sweeping steps of the palace as an enormous, square-jawed bodyguard. He catches her bending over Goldenloin — wearing a hooded cloak to keep his face in shadow and hide his injuries — just before they begin, talking in a low voice. Goldenloin looks up at her, nods, and touches her shoulder before she struts over to the stage.

“I told him I’d make sure you don’t get hurt,” she rumbles.

“Thank you,” he says.

Standing in front of this many people is … not new, exactly, but he was never great at publicity, even when he was younger. Neither his face nor his personality inspire the kind of confidence required; there are many reasons why Goldenloin was the Institution’s golden boy. Nimona had managed to make his image work for her, but she’s also Nimona.

Five hundred-odd pairs of eyes watch him. He clears his throat and imagines that he’s speaking just to Nimona, off to his left, and just to Goldenloin, sitting in the third row. He skips quickly through the introductory remarks, which are basically the same for every public presentation, and dives into the body paragraphs before he can think too much about it.

“I’ve thought about being king quite a lot recently. I could finally do things the way they should be done. Legislation to oversee weapons experimentation to make sure that dangerous materials are contained safely and living beings are not subjected to inhumane tests solely because they have potential military value. Diversifying our defenses so the kingdom isn’t only being protected by one person and their interests and private army. I could do those things. But after discussing the situation with others who are close to it, I have decided that I would not be an adequate king.”

He waits for the crowd’s reaction to die down. A trio of grey-armored warriors exits the fudge shop on the right-hand side of the plaza. They are carrying halberds and do not look as though they were in the store to buy creamy sugar confections. A knot forms in Ballister's stomach.

“I can combine chemicals, and I can build myself an arm, but I can’t do those and also run a kingdom. Not one as large and prosperous as ours, not if we want it to stay large and prosperous.” He lists the ways in which the kingdom is prosperous, which he still thinks is unnecessary but which Goldenloin insisted on including. (”Remind them how wonderful they are, and how much they have to lose,” he said bitterly, "That always worked on me.") “But I know that I have the trust of the people, and I will do what I can to prove that I have earned that trust. I can’t rebuild our kingdom on my own; but I can search for those who _are_ capable, who are motivated for the good of the people of the kingdom, not just the institution of the kingdom. Not every single person who worked for the Institution believed in their ideals, and not everyone who claims to be impartial is. If you trust me to, I will find out the truth. I will lead you for as long as it takes to ensure that when I step down, the kingdom will not fall apart, or turn back to the same layers of secrets and lies as before.”

Nimona slips away off at his side, and he tries not to look nervous as he reads down the page. There is a ping of blue light at the corner of his vision. He breaks off. Nimona waves at him in a way that is obviously meant to be reassuring, but she does it while wielding a glowing spear recently liberated from one of the warriors. Ballister takes a steadying breath before continuing.

He makes it all the way through the rest of the prepared statement without incident, and even manages to answer a few questions. And when he finally steps down from the steps, almost every person on the lawn rises to their feet. The air fills with cheers, stamping and shouting, and Ballister only barely prevents himself from going slack-jawed with surprise and wonder. There are more than a few soured faces in his audience, but there are hundreds and hundreds of people around him celebrating, excited, and they will never know the real driving force behind his success.

Goldenloin reaches out to him when he approaches, and Ballister draws him to his feet, into a tight hug. “Thank you,” Goldenloin shouts into his ear. “For a few days, I thought you were planning to take over the kingdom.” Ballister just holds on, half supporting him.

When they break apart, Nimona is there, waiting. She raises an eyebrow at them. Goldenloin holds out his hand to her, steadying himself on Ballister’s shoulder. “I saw what you did,” he says. “Thank you.”

Nimona eyes him up. “I don’t watch out for him for you.” But she shakes Goldenloin’s hand, and Ballister feels a small bubble of hope rising in his chest.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are speeches, a committee, and even more feelings.

When Ballister agreed to help figure out his country’s government problem, he had — as he did with most of his projects, to be honest — vastly underestimated the amount of time and resources that he would need in order to get to the point where he could begin to figure out how to approach the problem. That is to say, in order to rebuild a government, he would first have to learn how a government worked. As soon as he had approached the Royal Library with a petition for research materials, the librarian had directed him to an entire room of the library, with strategically placed sliding ladders to make accessing the top shelves easier. Ballister had attempted to read the treatises and philosophic texts on the nature of government, and realized that he had come up against a fairly large roadblock.

Fortunately, this time, he was not in uncharted territory. It turned out that there were dozens of people who studied governments the same way that he studied villainous plots, and they were all too willing to help him figure out how to write one. It had only been a matter of putting out advertisements in as many newspapers as he could find within a day’s traveling distance (thirty-seven); arranging a drop-off point for applications (the egg-seller’s stall at the Alchemists’ Street Market); and then sorting through the applicants to find ones who weren’t secretly serving the cause of the Institution or otherwise unqualified to help him reorganize the parts of the kingdom's government that had been controlled by the Institution.

His lab is his most productive place to go over applications as they come in; the atmosphere is familiar even if the work is not. He sits down with a large batch of applications during the afternoon at the end of the week, and forgets to stop until he is startled out of his work by a soft knock on the door in the wee hours of the morning.

When he opens it, Goldenloin is there, wrapped in a blanket, sitting stiffly in his wheelchair with his hair in a limp mess around his head.

“I saw the light on,” he says. “What are you doing?”

Ballister clutches a few resumes to his chest. “Trying to decide if Fleur Vistia is more or less qualified to help me determine the fate of the kingdom than Zaid Lionjoy. Do you know what any of this means? She says she has “experience constructing credit databases to track federal tax sectoral statistics in the commercial fields.”

Goldenloin reaches out towards the papers with his good arm. “May I?” Ballister lets him take the whole stack, shifting them away from his body so that they are easier to reach. Goldenloin studies it, bleary-eyed but with the determined frown on his face that Ballister recognizes from jousting practice and fencing tournaments and lessons on heroic poetry. His face falls into lines easier than in Ballister’s memory, but that only makes sense; they are no longer callow youths. There are dark circles under his eyes, and Ballister remembers that he should have been asleep hours ago.

“Why are you still awake?” he asks.

“The right hand of righteousness never sleeps,” Goldenloin says, which isn’t an answer. He rests his chin in his hand. “Why are you even considering McIntyre? Her resume is full of short-term fluff jobs that only look good at a glance. She wouldn’t be reliable; she’d abandon the government if you didn’t give her a powerful enough position.”

“I expressly wrote in the announcement that I'm only interested in rebuilding the government. No one here is going to get first dibs on official positions just because they helped create them," Ballister points out. Goldenloin should know that.

But Goldenloin waves him off with an elegant turn of his wrist, eyes never leaving the page. “Doesn’t matter. There will always be those who are willing to turn any situation to their advantage.”

“I know that,” Ballister mutters darkly.

“You’re not one of them. It doesn’t come naturally to you, so you can’t imagine that anyone else would think like that,” says Goldenloin, and his eyes have left the page now and no, Ballister can see where this is going and it’s the middle of the night and he’s trying to avoid ruling the kingdom without ruining everything and he doesn’t have the energy to deal with a heart-to-heart right now; if he tries to divide his attention between helping the kingdom and sorting out his feelings, he's afraid that one or both of them will be doomed to failure. He isn't willing to risk either, so he sidesteps the compliment entirely, instead. “You inferred from her application?” he asks.

Goldenloin beckons him closer; Ballister circles around so that he can read over Goldenloin’s shoulder. “I don’t know anything about how to build a government, but I was in the room for the Director’s hiring sessions. I remember some of the things she said.”

“I don’t want to base my advisory committee on anything that the Director created,” Ballister is quick to point out.

“Some things were okay. Not as many as I thought,” Goldenloin responds. “Anyway. I’m going to get water like I wanted to do before I saw that your light was still on. You should go to sleep, too.” He hands the resumes back to Ballister with a sleepy smile.

Ballister accepts the papers; on an impulse, he bends over to kiss the top of his head, hand at Goldenloin's temple. “I will,” he says. “Good night, Ambrosius.”

Ballister retreats to his room shortly thereafter. His work stays in the lab, but it still feels like a long time before he is calm enough to sleep.

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

The total number of candidates (after a morning spent reviewing applications with Goldenloin at the public chess tables, guarded by Nimona in the form of an enormous gray wolf; followed by an afternoon and early evening at the headquarters of the Society for the Responsible Redistribution of Scientific Advancement presenting their conclusions to the SRRSA and a small contingent of reporters) comes to thirteen.

“This is good,” says Dr. Swanfoot. “Do you want me to call them now and let them know?”

Ballister shakes his head. “Put it up to a vote. You can do that,” he says to the reporters. “Put the list of candidates in the newspapers and broadsides. Tell people to to write in their opinions to the station, or the... newspaper headquarters.”

A reporter with her quill sticking out from behind her ear stands up at the back of the room. “Sir Blackheart, a question from the Old Town Examiner, New Typeset Edition. Aren’t you worried that encouraging the public to express possible discontent with your Institution-dissolution committee choices will undermine your authority?”

“What kind of question is that?” Goldenloin cuts in, scowling, before Ballister has a chance to answer. “Sir Blackheart is only here because he cares about fixing the wrongs that the Institution committed. If he loses respect because people don’t want him to care about them, then he has their respect for the wrong reason.”

Ballister coughs. Goldenloin looks up at him, cheeks red. “Nothing more to add,” says Ballister. “Jaz, could you please copy the names and resumes of the dissolution committee for the press? Misspelled names would look lazy.”

After the meeting is finished, Ballister guides Goldenloin’s wheelchair out of the building and into the Chariot of the Temporary King, which is slightly nicer than a horse-and-cart taxi in that it has passenger seats built into the cart, and a little red flag on a stick waving from the back to show how important they are. He wraps an arm around his friend’s waist and helps him into his seat — Goldenloin can stand up, and walk for short distances, but steps up, and the actual act of sitting down, are still difficult. Dr. Fayadse deems it likely that he will be able to walk unassisted within a year. All things considered, Ballister is grateful.

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

Ballister wakes up a few days later with Nimona curled up on his chest, a small grass snake wearing one of her own earrings as a necklace. He smothers his first instinct upon waking (which is to fling the snake across the room and take up his sword from its place under the bed) and takes a few deep, calming breaths. Nimona has a tightly wound curl of paper in her tail. The header of the paper, all that is visible for now, informs him that he is looking at this week’s edition of the Old town Examiner (New Typeset Edition). He reaches for the paper and wakes up Nimona, who slithers away and somersaults back into herself.

“Morning, boss,” she says. “You and Sir Fancypants made the tabloids. Can I go tell him? I wanna see his face.”

“What?” Ballister sits up. Nimona unfurls the paper and reads it aloud to him.

“Seen yesterday at the latest meeting of his campaign office, Sir Ballister Blackheart was accompanied by former Institution darling turned renegade hero, Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin. Sir Goldenloin became defensive over questions of Sir Blackheart’s motives in releasing his list of candidates to the public; the two were seen leaving the meeting together. Sources formerly employed by the Institution confirmed that the two were close childhood friends. Followup will be necessary to determine if nostalgia could possibly cloud our new leader’s judgment when it comes to selecting his advisers. Betcha couldn’t see that one coming,” Nimona says.

Ballister groans.

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

Ballister is shocked when he looks at a calendar and realizes that nearly three months have passed since the collapse of the Institution (though he’s not sure whether it feels like far longer, or far less time than that: every day seems to stretch on for at least thirty-six hours, but when taken together, weeks at a time fly by).

“What’s the plan for today, boss?” Nimona appears in the doorway of the living room, scrubbing at her eyes with the sleeve of a fuzzy sweater that clashes magnificently with her hair.

Ballister sets down his current design plans for the jaderoot disintegrator — which has been sadly neglected for the past month and a half. “I’m taking Sir Goldenloin to physical therapy, and as long as the latest round of candidates all made it through the public approval polls, meeting the full committee to start discussions this afternoon.”

“Boring,” Nimona pronounces.

“I would be testing more prototypes in my laboratory right now if you hadn’t decided to turn the kingdom into a republic.”

Nimona wanders past him towards the kitchen. “Still boring. I’m gonna join a gang and set the bank on fire.”

“You already burned down the bank.”

“There’s got to be more than one bank around here!”

“ _Nimona_.”

He can hear the refrigerator door being opened. “Don’t worry about me,” she calls back to him.

Ballister shakes his head. If he had ever followed that advice, his life would be very different. The sound of plastic wrappers rustling reminds him that he should eat, and he follows Nimona into the kitchen, notebook in hand.

Nimona is sitting on the counter, kicking her heels and eating cereal. “You could let me be king as you,” she suggests. “That’d be interesting _and_  have nothing to do with gangs.”

“No,” says Ballister.

She grins. “I can do a really good impression. Look!" She shifts, speaking in his voice. " _All shall kneel before King Blackheart! Annual science fairs are now mandatory in every town!_ ”

—“Nimona”—

—“ _This is my royal consort Queen Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin_ ,”—

—“Stop that,”—

—“ _And this is my new right-hand woman, the Duke of Invention, Lord Doctor Meredith Blitzmeyer._ ” Nimona gives him a stern, regal stare, both arms slung around invisible shoulders, cereal forgotten.

“Your grasp of titles leaves something to be desired,” says Ballister. He avoids looking at his own face. “It would be ‘Your Grace’ Blitzmeyer, anyway.”

Nimona leans back against the cabinets, shifting back into herself. “You’re tempted.”

He crosses his arms. “Not in the slightest.”

She mimics his posture. “Fine. But if I go off on my own and get arrested, you’ll bail me out of jail, right?”

Ballister doesn’t know whether to laugh or to scold her or to curl up in a ball and weep tears of some nameless, complicated emotion wedged between confusion and frustration and profound relief. He compromises by striding across the room and folding her into the tightest hug that he can manage, burying his face in her shoulder. “Of course,” he tells her.

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

The next twenty-five days pass by in a wintery, protracted blur: Ballister only remembers how many of them there are because he takes notes. He shuttles himself and Goldenloin between his headquarters and the temporary palace, where he and his committee have taken over a rather nice ballroom so that they — along with their audience of reporters at the end of every day, waiting for a summary — can discuss things in a setting with proper lighting and sturdy walls. Nimona spends most of the time patrolling the palace as a bird, or a snake, or a wolf. If she ever does need to defend the ballroom against angry aristocrats, or former members of the Institution out on bail, or marauding griffins, then Ballister never hears about it. On one occasion, she meets him outside of the palace with someone else's knife in her hand and a few rapidly-healing injuries that are gone by the time they make it back to their headquarters.

He doesn’t ask.

At night, they traipse back to Ballister’s headquarters. Ballister’s culinary skills are limited to a dozen dishes that Cook from the orphanage taught him over ten years of kitchen-duty sanctions for breaking orphanage regulations; and Goldenloin’s are nonexistent; so they usually find supper on the way home. Occasionally, Nimona will take over the kitchen to recombine large quantities of food and fill the adjoining rooms with bizarre scent combinations of spices, honey, and blood sausages. When that happens, Goldenloin flees to his room until the smell dissipates, while Ballister retreats to his lab, or to his room, or gives up and collapses into a chair to stare at the rug that he doesn’t remember being in front of the hearth a month ago.

Somewhere in between endless discussions of spreadsheets and the divisions of judicial power among local feudal lords — both at the palace and at home, until Nimona shuts off the video screen and demands that they do something _fun_ for once — Ballister and Goldenloin find time to spend together quietly. They don’t leave the house much without Nimona, even though Ballister is almost able to fend for himself these days. Tension is still high in the streets: uncertainty over the knowledge that the kingdom has irrevocably crossed a threshold into a new era. Ballister sees more print media in the streets than he has in a while. People hang banners from their windows and balconies and clotheslines calling for further castigations of the Institution, for the rebuilding of the Institution “but fixed”, supporting Ballister as monarch, supporting him and his dissolution committee, opposing all of the above, and a few that depict Nimona on the night that she broke free of the Institution, which he gathers from context is the result of a small group of angry anarchists. The streets thrum with energy, and neither he nor Goldenloin can leave the house without attracting some kind of attention.

They stay within the confines of Ballister’s headquarters, instead. Ballister has to fumigate the lab after discovering that one of the secondary components of his current jaderoot disintegration solution produces a sticky, foul-smelling vapor when it comes into contact with steel. While he's waiting for the lab to clear, he rearranges the furniture in the back room to make way for a chess table that he accepts — reluctantly — when Nimona brings it home from the park. (”It’s the sad one. No one ever uses it,” she claims.) Chess is one thing that he and Goldenloin can both still do, since horseback riding, climbing the orphanage’s huge pine trees, and exploring the city are off the table for the moment. They build up the fire against the cold and bicker over which version to use, and insult the mental fortitude of each other’s pawns, and then Goldenloin captures his second castle and Nimona appears in the doorway to inform them that Zaid Lionjoy called to say that he and his sub-committee had finished with their new tax law drafts.

“Finally,” says Ballister.

“I brought home fireworks so we can celebrate,” she adds. “Big ones!”

Goldenloin gives Ballister a lopsided smile — an expression that Ballister is starting to recognize might not be a temporary quirk, but a permanent reminder of their battle — and shrugs. “We could never see them from the orphanage when they set them off at the palace,” he says.

Ballister looks from him to Nimona, who is bouncing on the balls of her feet, and he knows that some battles just aren’t worth fighting. He sighs.

She pumps her fists in the air. _“Yes!_ ”

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

Once the tax laws have been wrapped up, (children will no longer be accepted as acceptable payment for debts, no matter how serious, and Ballister signs off on that part of their new constitution with Nimona sitting robin-shaped on one shoulder and Goldenloin’s hand on his other shoulder and he definitely doesn’t get emotional at a table full of scholars and accountants) and the committee still hasn’t reached a consensus on what to do with the Institution’s research materials, Ballister decides that if he is supposedly in charge of rebuilding the government, then he can damn well take a few (citizen-approved) liberties. Even if they might be ever-so-slightly self-interested.

“Would you like to teach?” he asks Nimona.

She interrupts what she’s doing — at this moment, it involves tearing into a whole duck with her long curved fangs, watching a tape of an old jousting tournament in the living room. She turns to him slowly, a stray feather hanging from her fangs. Ballister waits. Nimona swallows, which requires her to tilt her head back and gulp a little like a pelican.

“What?” she asks.

The microwave dings in the kitchen, and when Ballister opens the door, the scent of asparagus quiche greets him like a loving and slightly musty old friend. He welcomes it into his hands and joins Nimona on the opposite end of the couch out of the way of any stray bits of duck. "Sir Goldenloin and I were discussing what we would like to do after this is finished. He wants to renovate the orphanage where we grew up. I’m going to open a university,” he tells her. “There should be a place for the sort of research that the Institution claimed to be doing. In ethical amounts. Would you want to help?”

Nimona pauses the movie. Her face can be difficult to read when it’s not fully human. Ballister had expected a quick answer — a jubilant affirmative or a snickered no — but Nimona appears to actually be giving it some thought.

“What would I teach?” she asks, shrinking her teeth back to a normal size. “I can’t make people into shapeshifters. I could teach about how to rob banks, but you’re supposed to be a big hero now … also, I’m supposed to be dead.”

Her tone is casual, but her posture is stiff and hunched over her dinner. Ballister straightens his own back, but mimics her casual tone. “I agree that the kingdom is not ready for your particular set of skills. Perhaps when the university is better established,” he suggests, but Nimona shakes her head.

"I don't know enough science. I just drink things that might be poison and see what happens."

"I only thought — if you needed something to do, there will be a place for you." He frowns at the floor, unsure of whether to say more. "Or whoever you want to be."

Nimona tips her head to the side. “I like being your sidekick. You need someone to hang around and make sure you remember how to be evil.”

Ballister hesitates. “Then you are staying after this is done?”

Nimona puts her duck down on the table. She scoots across the couch to him, arranging herself cross-legged with one knee knocking against him. Ballister wraps an arm around her shoulders, and she leans against him. “You got it, boss.”

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

The line rings three times before Dr. Blitzmeyer picks up.

“Sir Blackheart — you’re the one who broke my prototype! What brings you here today?” she says.

“I’m sorry about that." Ballister pauses and waits for the sound of careful hammering on Blitzmeyer's end to die down. "How is the new one coming along?” he asks.

“Fine, fine. I added some more layers of refraction to the glass on the main container just in case you need to borrow it again. That friend of yours sure did a number on it."

“Oh. That’s … very generous of you, thank you. I don’t need any specific items this time. I have a favor to ask of you. And an offer.”

“What’s the favor? I’ve been working on turning my energy source collector into a workable battery. No luck yet, but if you want a look at the prototypes…” In the background, Ballister hears papers shuffling and then being tossed aside.

Ballister does want to look at the prototypes, very much. He would like to study them in detail and show them to Nimona, if only because she is the only one who has any understanding of how her energy works. Unfortunately, he has to focus. ”Actually, I’m going to open a university. Do you want to help?”

A pause. “Is that the offer or the favor?”

Ballister frowns. “…It was supposed to be the offer. I have most of the former Institution’s treasury at my disposal. I can pay you to do research.”

“Do I get to keep copyright on work that I do with university materials?” she asks doubtfully.

“You get copyright, and the university would get first bid on purchasing rights.”

“Okay, _that’s_ an offer. What’s the favor?” she asks, sounding considerably more enthused.

“You have friends right? Other scientists?”

“Well, most of my friends are from my knitting group or my poetry club. But I’ve got plenty of colleagues.”

“Are any of them good at teaching?”

"That depends. Jamie is great to work with, but try to get her to explain alternating currents for a lay audience and it's a disaster. Lupe just retired but you know what that means, she's just trying to avoid more deadlines. And let's see, Blockhead is, huh, actually forget about him ..."

"So, yes?" says Ballister.

"I can think of a couple. Us scientists have got to stick together."

“Do you think they would come teach for the university if I made them a similar offer?”

There's a pause on the other end; Ballister can hear Dr. Blitzmeyer open a door, and then the sound of many small, metallic objects cascading down from a height, and aborted curses. He winces in sympathy. “I’ll see what I can do," says Dr. Blitzmeyer a moment later, sounding a little out of breath. "I’ve got a poet friend who teaches composition, you want me to talk to him too?”

Ballister blinks. “I hadn’t thought about that." The Institution had focused entirely on the sciences, with enough history taught and studied to understand the current political climate. But even though that was the way it had been done for as long as he could remember, it didn't have to stay that way, did it? That's what this is all about. "I’ll let you know. Do you have my number?”

She hums for a moment. The door shuts again. “Better give it to me again, just in case. My workshop is a mess right now.”

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

The Temporary King Blackheart’s Institution Dissolution Committee meets for the last time eighty-four days after their first convocation. All major items have been resolved, but there are still signatures to add onto different copies of documents, and a few errata to put into order. The hum of almost-released tension in the room prickles against Ballister’s skin, making him itch unreasonably as they proceed through the agenda, marching towards the conclusion of nearly three months' uninterrupted work. Everyone else feels it too; he can tell from the way that the other members of the committee fidget around the table, the way that someone keeps kicking at one of the table legs rhythmically until one of the Institution’s former account managers snaps that whoever is doing that needs to stop before they break their casualty-free streak of legislation-writing.

The last thing to be written into the new constitution is a provision to keep Princess Isabel safe and out of power, as well as her great-aunt and all of the royal pets. Zaid Lionjoy reads aloud the conclusion, and it is unanimously voted into action. They pass the paper around so that they can each sign it. Ballister gets it last: a long roll of vellum with thirteen signatures at the end. He adds his name near the bottom of the roll, caps his pen, and looks around.

“Thank you,” he says. “I’ve made more long speeches in the last four or five months than I ever planned on, so I won’t this time.” The announcement is met with a short round of applause. “Thank you, all of you, for your help. I would never be able to do any of this without you. All of you. Does anyone else want to say anything?”

They do, as it turns out. One woman extols their probable place in history books; another tells them that they’re probably doomed to failure, but she’s proud to have helped with something that was, at least, done in good faith; and so on.

Ballister drops the stone gavel for the last time. Everyone rises, a little awkwardly. Someone — Ballister suspects a hidden Nimona, because he can see no obvious source — starts to clap and cheer. He rolls up the constitution and tucks it under his arm. “Good work, everyone.”

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

Nimona bounces around the cart as it takes them home. “I did good, didn’t I, boss?” she asks, punching Ballister in the shoulder. “Getting everyone to like you? It turned out okay.”

“There was a remarkable lack of chaos,” Ballister admits. He grabs the back of her shirt as she leans over the edge of the cart to snap her teeth at a low-flying pigeon.

Goldenloin turns away from the road, where he has been watching the palace disappear behind them. “The kingdom is lucky to have you,” he says. Nimona twists around in her seat. “Both of you,” he adds.

Nimona makes a face and snuggles into Ballister’s side. She tugs the edge of his cloak out from him so that she can wrap herself in it for warmth. When Ballister looks down, he catches a glimpse of fangs. “I’m a vicious monster,” she reminds Goldenloin.

Goldenloin points at the patch over his right eye. “Trust me — I know. But you still did good.” He glances up at Ballister and gives him a slight nod.

 

°。°。°。°。°。°。°

 

At the doorstep, Nimona flings herself inside with a gleeful shout of “Time for s’mores!”and Ballister holds Goldenloin back when he starts to follow her inside. It’s snowing, late winter snow that’s going to turn to slush and freeze over by the morning, but there's more privacy in the muffled white snow than there is inside.

“We can talk now, if you still want to,” says Ballister.

“What?” asks Goldenloin.

“You wanted to talk, and I cut you off because it was the day that the Society for the Responsible Redistribution was in the newspaper, and I was afraid, do you remember?” Ballister prods, because Goldenloin is not taking the hint that he assumed he would.

Goldenloin blinks at him a few times before he gets it. “That was _months_ ago. I assumed you just didn’t want to talk because you were too busy."

“I did have a lot on my mind,” Ballister admits. "I didn't have enough room for other things."

“Ah, right.” Goldenloin nods.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Someone yells at their horse a few streets over, and cart wheels rattle against the cobblestones in the distance. Ballister Blackheart and Ambrosius Goldenloin look at each other.

“I wish,”— 

“I love,”—

They both stop. Goldenloin holds up his hand. “I wish I hadn’t let them give me that lance,” he says. “I wish I had apologized to you sooner."

“I love you,” says Ballister.

The window by the front door swings open, and Nimona leans out, chin in her hands and marshmallows already stuffed in her cheeks. “Hey Sir Fancypants, how many marshmallows do you want in your s’more?” she asks, voice muffled.

Goldenloin frowns.

“We were about to have a moment,” Ballister informs her.

Nimona looks between them. She swallows her marshmallows. “Ohhhhh,” she says, and sinks from view towards the floor. “I'll just ... wait. Bye. See you soon.” A hand reaches up for the window to pull it shut and latch it.

Ballister and Goldenloin look at each other. Ballister moves his hand up to Goldenloin’s face. He glances around, but they are alone on this road in the wet, quiet evening. When he looks back, Goldenloin drapes his arms around his neck, and then they are kissing, and Ballister has to readjust his arm because Goldenloin is leaning on him for support now, and snow lands on his eyelashes before he remembers to shut his eyes, and it is unexpectedly familiar and wonderful, all of it.

Ballister leans back and smiles. He tries and fails to think of something better to say to complete the moment, but Goldenloin runs a hand through his hair and pulls him in close.

“What are s’mores?” he whispers.

Ballister laughs. In a burst of joy, he pushes the door open ahead of them and sweeps Goldenloin into his arms. “Come in and see,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> Citations:  
> 1\. Fleur Vistia's resume includes a line from [this paper](http://behl.berkeley.edu/files/2011/03/WP2013-02_monnet_2-7-13.pdf). I don't understand it either. It just sounded complicated-enough.  
> 2\. [Inspiration for the Declaration of Intent](http://www.luther.de/en/95thesen.html)


End file.
